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Nova Scotia cancer rates highest in the nation – Metro US

Nova Scotia cancer rates highest in the nation

The bad news is Nova Scotia still has the highest cancer incidence rates in the country, the Canadian Cancer Society announced Thursday.

Maureen Summers, executive director of the society’s Nova Scotia division, said 6,000 new cancer diagnoses and 2,700 deaths from the disease are expected here this year alone.

But the good news is the survival rate for all cancers in this province has improved by 4.5 per cent over the past decade, up to 62 per cent, she said.

Nevertheless, Ms. Summers said Nova Scotians need to do more to maintain healthy lifestyles and that more population-based cancer research is needed to better understand these stats.

“Cancer statistics are people with the tears wiped away,” she said, repeating a telling quote she once heard.

Also according to the 2009 Canadian Cancer Statistics, about 40 per cent of Canadian women and 45 per cent of men will develop cancer during their lifetimes, while about one in four in this country will die from the disease.